The Internet is chock full of sites where people review all sorts of products. Most of these reviews end with a rating between one and ten, a number of stars and other clever ways to grade what’s being reviewed. Over the last month or two, I have decided to stop using a scale of one to ten when reviewing men’s grooming products. The reason for this is simple: YMMV.

For those of you unfamiliar with the online term, YMMV, it means “your mileage may vary”. Obviously, shaving and grooming products don’t have any “mileage”, but over the years the phrase has come to more simply mean that your results may be different from mine. This is incredibly true with grooming supplies. What works for me, might be terrible for you, and vice versa. Colognes may smell fantastic on one person and smell like sewage on another. I might break out from using a specific aftershave balm, while it could be the best thing you’ve ever used for your skin. There is so much individual chemistry and personal taste involved here, that it’s too complicated to give something a simple number score and move on.

What I plan to do going forward is to give a little taste of my experience using a product. I might tell a short story or try to describe what a certain smell brought to mind for me or tell you how I struggled to use something. Then I will tell you what I liked or didn’t like, and try to give an explanation of why. And finally, I will either recommend a product or not and offer some alternatives instead. I hope you like this format. It seems a little different than some of the other sites out there. Hopefully it's more personal and more open for conversation.

Still, don’t be afraid to try something I didn’t like or something I couldn’t recommend. Remember, YMMV!